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Monday, February 29, 2016

This book
was on my to-read pile for quite a while; I finally got to it, but it took me some
time to get through it since it’s a dense read.

The plot is
straightforward. Marion and his twin
brother Shiva are born in Ethiopia in 1954 to a Carmelite nun and a British
surgeon. They are “orphaned” because
their mother dies in childbirth and their father flees. They are raised by two doctors, Dr. Hemalatha
(Hema) and her husband Dr. Ghosh, who work at the hospital where the twins are
born. Marion, the narrator, tells about
the people and events that shape their lives and result in a distancing between
the twins as they grow up.

The novel
has received many laudatory reviews, but I found the book uneven in quality. As I mentioned, the plot is relatively simple,
but the book is rather lengthy. There
are numerous tangents. The descriptions
of surgeries are very detailed, and unnecessarily so. The author is a physician but not all readers
work in the medical field. Do I really
need to know how to repair the vena cava? The reader will learn about Ethiopian culture
and history and the practice of medicine in a society with limited
resources. Unfortunately, some of these
digressions overpower the plot.

The number
of coincidences also bothered me.
Characters cross paths by chance just when they need to. Marion becomes a surgeon in the U.S., a
country with a large population, yet he meets several people from his
past. I read a review in The Guardian which expresses my feelings: “This is a book narrated by a surgeon, and
structured as a surgeon might structure it: after the body has been cut open
and explored everything is returned to its place and carefully sutured up -
which is not, in the end, how life actually works” (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/09/abraham-verghese-cutting-for-stone). The ending is supposed to be satisfying but
feels melodramatic.

Characterization
is also an issue. The narrator speaks in
a monotone and is quite judgmental so I found it difficult to engage with
him. At times he is so irritating. The female characters tend to be stereotypes.
Genet, Marion’s childhood sweetheart, is
especially problematic. We see her
entirely from Marion’s point of view so she fails to develop into a round
character. (And a scene involving her and
Marion in the last part of the novel is very disturbing.) The character who stands out for me is Ghosh;
he is a dynamic character who recognizes his flaws and emerges as a wise and
compassionate man.

The novel offers
a warning about living one’s life: “everything
you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don’t sow, becomes part of
your destiny.” This idea is
repeated: “Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny”
and “The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we
know it or not.” To this is added the
caution that “no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter
how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.” “You live [life] forward, but understand it
backward. It is only when you stop and look
to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel” so we need to
remember that we are all capable of administering first-aid treatment by
ear: “words of comfort.”

I
occasionally tackle a big book; this one at over 650 pages qualifies. Its unevenness makes it a slog at times. I wish an editor with cutting skills worthy
of a surgeon had taken a scalpel to it so the unhealthy elements had been
removed.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Many
readers dream of working in a bookstore; certainly, that is something I
wish I’d had the opportunity to do. Well,
I came across some information about a holiday flat in Scotland which comes with a
bookstore which guests are expected to run:
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/7908227#. I’m putting this on my bucket list!

Friday, February 26, 2016

On February
7, I mentioned that, since 2016 is the 400th anniversary of
Shakespeare’s death, I will occasionally focus on some Shakespeare books to be
found on Schatje’s Shelves. I’ve already
recommended my choice for a single-volume of the entirety of Shakespeare’s
work; today I’m suggesting two books which may help readers with their
understanding of the plays.

Northrop Frye on
Shakespeare,
edited by Robert Sandler, won the 1986 Governor General’s Award for
Non-Fiction. Frye’s lecture notes for an
undergraduate Shakespeare course focus on several plays: Romeo
and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
The Bolingbroke Plays, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Measure
for Measure, The Winter’s Tale,
and The Tempest.

Shakespeare: The
Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom has 35 essays, offering a fairly comprehensive
interpretation of the plays.

Some
readers prefer not to read literary criticism, but to those who enjoy reading
the interpretations of scholars, I’d definitely recommend these two books to
enrich one’s appreciation of The Bard.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

From my reviews archive, I thought I’d post my reviews of
Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy, set on the Isle of Lewis, the northernmost of the
Outer Hebrides. It’s a case of the first
being excellent and the sequels just not measuring up.

The Blackhouse

4 Stars

This is the first of a literary thriller trilogy set on the
Isle of Lewis, the northernmost of the Outer Hebrides. Detective Fin Macleod, a
native of the island, is dispatched from Edinburgh to investigate a gruesome
murder which resembles an earlier one committed in the city. The victim in
Fin’s hometown is a local bully, Angel Macritchie, with whom Fin was
acquainted. Reluctant to return to the island after an absence of many years,
Fin nonetheless uncovers the identity of the killer and forgotten secrets of
his early years.

The narrative is split between third person limited
omniscient from Fin’s viewpoint as he investigates the murder in the present
and first person from Fin’s viewpoint as he revisits his troubled memories of
his 18 years on the Isle of Lewis. One of the most memorable flashbacks is to
that of the guga harvest, the culling of juvenile gannets, a rite of passage
for young men from the island.

Detective Fin Macleod is introduced and he, like a lot of
literary detectives, comes with a lot of personal baggage. His many flaws are
revealed gradually as he narrates episodes of his past. He proves not to be a
totally admirable human being, but he seems well aware of his shortcomings and
seems to genuinely want to make amends for his failings. Life has dealt Fin
some devastating blows so one cannot help but have some sympathy for him.

What is interesting about a lot of the characters is that
they are all shown to have both positive and negative traits. First impressions
are often shown to be inaccurate. Angel, the victim, has no shortage of
enemies. “’There’s a whole generation of men from Crobost who suffered at one
time or another at the hands of Angel Macritchie’” (52) and the general feeling
is that “’Whoever did it deserves a fucking medal’” (112). Yet Fin admits that
in his role as cook for the guga hunters, he succeeded “in earning their
respect” (197) and his behaviour towards a paraplegic classmate is better than
that of anyone else (255 – 256).

The quality of the writing surpasses what is often found in
mysteries. Diction such as “fallen into desuetude” (49) and “the gloom of this
tenebrous place” (215) is the exception in mysteries but seems to be the rule
for Peter May. Of course, this book is more than a mystery; in fact, the murder
investigation is secondary to the exploration of Fin’s past.

There are several surprises along the way but the author
plays no tricks. There are clues throughout although they are subtle. For me,
the biggest clues were Fin’s inability to remember certain things though his
memory of other events is almost eidetic. The revelations at the end answer the
questions the reader might have in the course of reading the book. Most readers
will correctly identify the killer, but his motivation is not fully explained
until the end.

The portrayal of life in a small town is such that anyone
who has ever lived in one will immediately recognize as accurate. As a young
man, Fin wants to escape “the claustrophobia of village life, the petulance and
pettiness, the harbouring of grudges” (180) but as an adult he realizes the
villagers’ “struggle for existence against overwhelming odds. Good people, most
of them” (79). Most of us have had such mixed emotions about our hometowns.

I’m really looking forward to the second and third books of
this trilogy.

The Lewis Man

3 Stars

This second novel of the Lewis Trilogy opens with the
discovery of a body in a peat bog. Fin Macleod, a retired police detective who
has returned to the Isle of Lewis, the Hebridean island of his birth, is drawn
into the murder investigation when it is determined that the body has DNA links
to Tormod Mackenzie, the father of Marsaili, Fin’s first love.

The book has two points of view. Part is narrated in third
person, focusing on Fin; other sections are in first person with Tormod as the
narrator. This latter point of view is interesting because Tormod suffers from
dementia. We learn about his life from his memories of the distant past. Some
of the suspense in the novel is derived from our wondering whether Fin will be
able to uncover that past without Tormod’s assistance. The problem is that
Tormod’s memories are formed into such clear and detailed narratives; this
hardly seems believable in a person suffering from progressive dementia.

One aspect of the novel that bothered me is the lengthy
descriptions of the landscape and weather. Here’s an example: “The night was
filled with the whispering sound of the sea. It sighed, as if relieved by the
removal of its obligation to maintain an angry demeanour. A three-quarters moon
rose into the blackness above it and cast its light upon the water and the
sand, a light that threw shadows and obscured truths in half-lit faces. The air
was soft, and pregnant with the prospect of coming summer, a poetry in the
night, carried in the shallow waves that burst like bubbling Hippocrene all
along the beach’ (252). The descriptions are poetic, but when virtually every
chapter includes such descriptions, they soon become tedious. The author is
certainly trying to establish the beauty and desolation of the Outer Hebrides,
but so many references to the weather are not necessary to do so.

It is best if one has read the first book in the trilogy, The Blackhouse, because characters from
it reappear and their stories are further developed. Fin’s relationships with
Marsaili and her son Fionnlagh are better understood if one knows what
transpired earlier. One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is these relationships.
The past weighs heavily on Tormod but it does as well in Fin’s life.

Besides the weight of the past, this book also touches in
the mistreatment of children. Fin’s childhood was less than ideal and Tormod’s
was even less so. The novel touches on "the homers" - children from
broken homes who were relocated to foster families in the Hebrides.

The resolution relies too highly on coincidence. The number
of characters who come together at the end is unbelievable. And the
foreshadowing of Fin’s comment, “’I wish you hadn’t told him your dad’s name’”
(279) doesn’t make the ending more credible.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series; this
second one was less satisfying, but I will certainly read the third to find out
how it all ends.

The Chessmen

3 Stars

This is the last of The Lewis Trilogy; unfortunately, it is
a disappointment.

Fin Macleod and a friend, Whistler Macaskill, discover a
body in a plane at the bottom of a loch after it is drained. The body is
identified as that of Roddy Mckenzie, a successful musician and friend of Fin
and Whistler who disappeared seventeen years earlier. The remains indicate
Roddy was murdered. As Fin sets out to investigate, he slowly uncovers several
long-hidden secrets. Interspersed with the mystery are flashbacks to Fin’s
youth as a roadie for Roddy’s band, Sòlas, a band in which Whistler was also a
member.

One of the problems with the book is that characters are
introduced who are never even mentioned in the previous two books. Whistler,
for example, has been arguably Fin’s closest friend from childhood yet Fin
never visited him when he returned to the Isle of Lewis? Fin’s time as a roadie
for a Celtic band was also not detailed previously, though that was apparently
a significant event in his life at university. Introducing so many new
characters in the last of a trilogy suggests poor plotting.

Another weakness is the backstory of the band. Almost all
the bandmates vie for the attention of the female lead singer, Mairead. Not
only is their bickering rather juvenile, it seems a too-obvious ploy to add to
the list of possible suspects in Roddy’s murder since Roddy and Mairead have an
on-again/off-again relationship with Mairead turning to other band members when
she and Roddy quarrel.

There is also some obvious plot manipulation which is unfair
to the reader. Fin suspects Whistler has some information which he is not
divulging, but he never directly confronts him to learn what he knows; he
“allowed the issue to drift, failed to confront it” (265). Then, as Fin gets
closer to the truth, he refuses to tell George Gunn, his policeman friend, what
he suspects. He says, “’You do [deserve to know], George. And I promise, you’ll
be the first. But not yet’” (225). He even repeats this later: “’I can’t tell you,
George. Not yet’” (231). And to his lover, Fin says, “’I’ll go to [the police]
when I know the truth. The whole truth’” (243). Withholding information from
the reader is a cheap shot.

The resolution to the mystery is rather unbelievable. Most
readers will come to suspect the truth but will dismiss that possibility as too
incredible. The resolutions of the other stories carried over from the first
two books seem rushed and contrived as well.

What I did enjoy is the historical elements. The references
to the Lewis chess pieces and the sinking of the Iolaire had me researching more information. I had also never
heard of a bog burst.

In looking back, I wish I had read only The Blackhouse and skipped the other two books in the trilogy since
they just don’t measure up to the standards of that first one.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Today
begins Freedom to Read Week which is “an annual event that encourages Canadians
to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is
guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

During this
week, visit the website of the Canadian Book and Periodical Council (http://www.freedomtoread.ca/). It lists 100 publications that have been
challenged in Canada in the past decades: http://www.freedomtoread.ca/challenged-works/. Each challenge sought to limit public access
to the works in schools, libraries, or bookstores. Sometimes challenges succeed and sometimes they
fail. But even if challenges are dismissed
and books remain on library shelves or curriculum lists, the effect of a
controversy over print material can spread. For example, often a book with a controversial
reputation tends to be quietly dropped from reading lists and curricula.

To mark
Freedom to Read Week, the Book and Periodical Council has prepared a list of 30
publications which Canadians have tried to remove: http://www.freedomtoread.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/30-challenged-publications-6-pages1.pdf. This document makes interesting reading
because it discusses specific books and reasons why removals were
requested. Books have been challenged for “morbid, Satanic
themes,” “the portrayal of racial minorities,” promoting “an anti-logging viewpoint,”
“the depiction of wizardry and magic,” profane language, descriptions of sex
scenes, and depicting a character who “challenges adult authority.”

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Yesterday, February 19, was Amy Tan’s 64th
birthday. I had intended to post a
review of one of her novels then, but I felt I had to write about the passing
of Harper Lee. Tan is probably best
known for The Joy Luck Club, her
first novel, which I actually taught a number of times when I was
teaching. I’m posting my review of her
latest novel, The Valley of Amazement,
which was published in 2013.

2 Stars

Having read Amy Tan’s other novels, I looked forward to
reading her most recent one. Unfortunately, my expectations were dashed; the
book was a disappointment.

Set primarily in the first quarter of the twentieth century
in Shanghai, the majority of the novel focuses on Violet Minturn, the daughter
of Lucia, an American woman who manages a first-class courtesan house in the
city, and an absent Chinese father. When Violet is fourteen, her mother leaves
for San Francisco but, because of a man’s devious machinations, Violet is
separated from her mother and forced to remain in Shanghai where she is trained
as a courtesan. 337 pages are then devoted to 13 years of Violet’s life, years
during which she searches desperately for love. Via a 96-page flashback, we are
given the story of Lucia’s life which, not surprisingly in an Amy Tan novel,
has many parallels with Violet’s.

The first 90+ pages, detailing Violet’s life with her
mother, are interesting. Violet learns some family secrets and has to deal with
accepting her bi-racial background: “I feared that over time, I would no longer
be treated like an American, but as no better than other Chinese girls. . . . I
was a half-breed. . . . I feared the stranger-father within my blood. Would his
character also emerge and make me even more Chinese? And if that came to pass,
where would I belong? What would I be allowed to do? Would anyone love a
half-hated girl?” (46 – 47).

The longest section describing Violet’s life from 1912 to
1925 is tiresome. Initially there is little tension. Violet does have to adapt
to life as a courtesan, but it is a life of which she had a very good
understanding. One chapter is entitled “Etiquette for Beauties of the Boudoir”
“wherein Magic Gourd advises young Violet on how to become a popular courtesan
while avoiding cheapskates, false love, and suicide” (139). It is obvious Tan
did considerable research, but the 35-page chapter reads like a personal essay.
What then follows is Violet’s life as a courtesan and her search for true love
in a life devoted to the illusion of romance. Her search is not easy. Virtually
all the men behave badly and Violet is left to suffer, albeit with Magic Gourd,
her surrogate mother, always by her side. The problem is that the plot becomes
predictable: Violet is warned not to do something, but she does it nonetheless
and tragedy follows. Not learning from her mistakes, she makes the same poor
choices over and over. Tragedy follows tragedy but it becomes difficult to have
much sympathy for her since she never seems to mature.

When Lucia’s life is finally detailed, the reader is served
a virtual repetition of Violet’s. A rebellious, self-assured girl feels unloved
and so makes poor choices and suffers accordingly. The number of parallels
between their lives is just too many: both choose men very unwisely and suffer
devastating loss; both possess traits of pride and selfishness and the same
harsh judgmental attitude towards parents. At one point, Magic Gourd tells
Violet, “You are like your mother in so many ways. You often see too much, too
clearly, and sometimes you see more than what is there. But sometimes you see
far less. You are never satisfied with the amount or kind of love you have”
(131). This type of direct characterization just repeats what has already
become obvious. Furthermore, there are even parallels between the characters that
people their lives. For example, Violet has her ever faithful companion, Magic
Gourd, while Lucia has Golden Dove. Lu Shing moves in and out of Lucia’s life
but affects it profoundly, and Loyalty Fang performs the same role in Violet’s.
Both stories possess shams; the artist in one copies the works of famous
artists and the poet in the other copies the poems of ancestors. These numerous
echoes suggest a great deal of contrivance.

Another problem is that characters are not likeable. Violet
can best be described as bland and naïve, and it is impossible not to become
frustrated with her inability or unwillingness to learn from her experiences.
Lucia is the same. There is also the difficulty with believability. Would a
woman who has lost one child risk the possibility of losing a second child?
Would a woman whose livelihood depends on being able to accurately gauge the
trustworthiness of men be so blind to the true qualities of some men? Would a
woman who has suffered what can only be called as a life-destroying loss show
such little distress and give only rare thought to what she has lost? Sometimes
there are contradictions. One minute Violet says, “It was strange how quickly
it happened. . . . I felt free. That’s when I knew I could end our relationship
for good. . . . I simply didn’t love him anymore” and then she says, “I stopped
breaking up with him. . . . we always conceded that we loved each other. . . .
We admitted it” (550 – 551). This is her behaviour towards the end of the book
and this change occurs in the course of one page!

Stylistically, there are flaws. The book is much longer than
it need be; it could use a judicious editing. The detailed descriptions of
clothing and furniture are really not necessary. There is also unnecessary
repetition: Lucia tries opium for the first time (489) and then she makes
statements like, “This possibility was my opium” (496) and “Those words were
opium to my soul” (510). Even the symbolism lacks depth: the use of the
painting entitled The Valley of Amazement
as a symbol for a life “that did not exist” (521) because it shows a truth
“whitewashed with fake happiness” (573) is anything but subtle.

This novel revisits themes that Tan has explored in previous
novels: identity and mother/daughter relationships. The elements of family
secrets, misunderstandings, and yearning for a mother’s love have appeared in
other of her books, so one will not discover much new in this one.

To my dismay, I found Tan’s latest novel a
wearying read. I was anxious for it to end. Like Lucia and Violet, it begins
with self-assurance but, like them, it goes on and on without new insight.
Sadly, I was left with the feeling that Tan has become like Perpetual and Lu
Shing; the men copy the poems and paintings of others, and she is imitating her
previous work.

Friday, February 19, 2016

As
virtually everyone who reads now knows, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, passed away
today. That novel is one of the most
beloved and most taught works of American fiction. It is a book I taught numerous times over my
30 years as an English teacher.

In Harper
Lee’s honour, I did some reflecting on some of my favourite quotes from that
novel. Here are my top ten:

Until l
feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.
One does not love breathing (22).

“I think
there’s just one kind of folks. Folks”
(230).

“Everybody’s
gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin’” (230).

“Real
courage . . . It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin
it anyway and see it through no matter what” (116).

“You never
really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . .
. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (34).

“The one
thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” (109).

“Most people are [real nice], Scout, when you finally
see them” (284).

“Things are
never as bad as they seem” (218).

“You’ll see
white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something
. . . whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how
rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash” (223).

“Mockingbirds
don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . That’s why it’s a sin
to kill a mockingbird” (94).

Last year,
there was a lot of controversy surrounding the publication of Lee’s second
novel, To Set a Watchman, which reveals
a different Atticus Finch. That’s the
first book I reviewed on my blog – see my first entry of July 16, 2015.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

I chose to
read this book because it won a Costa Book of the Year Award (for 2006), and I’ve
often liked the winners of this particular literary prize. I was also intrigued by the repeated
reference to the fact that the author set this book in Canada though she had
never visited the country; apparently she suffered from agoraphobia for years
and so relied strictly on research for details about the setting.

The novel
is set in 1867and begins in Dove River, a small settlement on Georgian Bay. The body of Laurent Jammet, a trapper and
trader, is discovered by his neighbour, Mrs. Ross. Representatives of the Hudson Bay Company are
called to investigate. Mrs. Ross’ adopted
son, Francis, has gone missing and he becomes a major suspect. Mrs. Ross sets out with William Parker, an
Indian tracker and another suspect in the murder, to find her son who himself seems
to have been following a set of tracks. An
adventure/survival story is thereby joined to a murder mystery.

Everyone in
this book seems to go on a journey looking for someone; the supposedly isolated
woods around Lake Huron have a lot of people travelling through them in the
winter. Mrs. Ross and Parker set off in search of
Francis; David Moody, an HBC representative, and Jacob, his Indian companion,
set off in search of Francis, Mrs. Ross and Parker; a search party of five sets
out to find Francis, Mrs. Ross, Parker, Mr. Moody, and Jacob; and there are
even flashbacks to the searches for two teenaged girls who went missing twenty
years earlier. Some searches are
successful, but some people find only themselves at the end of their journeys.

The novel
lacks focus. There are so many
characters. Besides Mrs. Ross, William
Parker, David Moody, Jacob, and Francis, individual and specific attention is given to Angus Ross,
Francis’ father; Andrew Knox, the magistrate of Dove River, and his two
daughters, Susannah and Maria; Mackinley, the leader of the HBC investigators; Thomas
Sturrock, an itinerant searcher and former journalist; three residents of
Himmelvanger, a cloistered religious village; several people who live and work at
Hanover House, an old fort; and even Dr. Watson, an asylum superintendent. There are several chance encounters amongst
these characters: Maria meets a man in
Sault Ste. Marie whom Thomas had known in Toronto; David meets a woman whom Thomas
had met years earlier in Burkes Falls; Parker has a connection to the husband
of one of the women living in Himmelvanger.

And there
are too many subplots. Besides the murder
investigation, there’s a plot involving a Norwegian religious settlement,
another about a bone tablet which seems to be a Rosetta Stone for a native
language, and a third about the decades-old mystery of missing sisters. All three of these subplots are largely
abandoned. And then there are the love
stories; love features prominently in the stories of several of the characters. A potential reader should be warned that
there are a lot of loose ends at the end of the book. (The murder case is solved, but by the time
the murderer is identified, the reader may not really care since it has become obvious
for some time that the innocent will not be punished.) In
fact, there are unanswered questions throughout; one that bothered me
throughout was how Mrs. Ross came to leave the mental asylum in which she
resided for years.

I don’t
understand the title since the tenderness of wolves is not discussed. There is a story about a wolf cub who is
raised as a pet but who eventually leaves its master: “’The Chippewa have a word for it – it means ‘the
sickness of long thinking’. You cannot
tame a wild animal, because it will always remember where it is from, and yearn
to go back.’” The Sickness of Long
Thinking is mentioned again at the end and explains one person’s choice, and it
seems that other characters suffer from this ailment as well, so it would have
been a much more appropriate title.

As I
mentioned at the beginning, I was interested in how many people were surprised
that the author wrote so convincingly about a place she had never visited. Many writers never visit the settings of
their novels so I don’t understand why this fact is noteworthy. But because Penney’s lack of firsthand
knowledge and reliance only on research were emphasized, I found myself looking
for possible errors. Perhaps I found
one: a woman mentions working in
Kitchener but the city now known as Kitchener was named Berlin from 1854 until
World War II.

I do not understand
why this novel won such a prestigious award.
Looking back at the longlist, A Spot
of Bother by Mark Haddon
would have gotten my vote. The Tenderness of Wolves has potential
but should have received some judicious editing.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Having read
and enjoyed Lupton’s previous novels, Sister
and Afterwards, I was excited to read
her new release. Though the book is
suspenseful, I found too much suspension of disbelief is required and that
definitely dampened my enjoyment.

Yasmin and
her ten-year-old daughter Ruby arrive in Alaska where they plan to meet Matt
for Christmas. Matt, Yasmin’s husband
and Ruby’s father, is a wildlife filmmaker.
When they arrive in Fairbanks, they learn that there was an explosion
and fire at Anaktue where Matt was living; everyone was killed. Yasmin is even given Matt’s wedding ring
which was found at the scene of the disaster.
Yasmin refuses to believe Matt is dead and sets off with Ruby, who was
born with total hearing loss, to find him.
She commandeers an 18-wheeler and heads north in total darkness,
encountering a blizzard with hurricane force winds while being followed by a threatening
tanker truck.

There are
several unrealistic events. It is
unlikely that a wildlife photographer would go north of the Arctic Circle in
the middle of winter to take photos when 24 hours of darkness is the norm. Then Yasmin is able to drive an 18-wheel,
40-ton truck with no previous experience other than watching a truck driver: he “navigated around hairpin bends and down
hills more like ski runs than a road, Yasmin focusing on the drive axles and
the air-actuated clutch and how power flowed to the tires without any
differential action, giving each wheel all the torque the road permitted.” It is emphasized that she is an
astrophysicist who has some knowledge of “the engineering part of physics,” as
if this is supposed to explain her adeptness.
At home, she drives “a Toyota Auris, which is quite small” but she
manages to drive a truck carrying a pre-fab house hundreds of miles - though
putting her foot on the pedal is “a stretch even with the seat as far forward
as it would go.” A foot of snow falls in
two hours, but between the poor visibility and the blizzard conditions she
manages to drive the highest mountain pass in Alaska? Because “she understood the mechanics of
driving the truck,” she manages the gear stick with ease, knows when she has to
chip ice and snow off the tires, and puts on tire chains with a minimum of
difficulty? She knows there is
sufficient “diesel to reach Deadhorse” but she doesn’t refuel there and
continues on? And a supposedly
intelligent woman would take her much-loved daughter on such a dangerous
journey?

There are
some unanswered questions. What happened
to the taxi plane Matt was supposed to take?
A survivor in the region of Anaktue would not see a search-and-rescue
plane? People would not be aware of 22
fracking wells about 40 miles downriver, even though it takes “five million
gallons” of water “to frack a single well”?

The novel
is narrated from two perspectives:
Yasmin’s in the third person and Ruby’s in first person. It is Ruby’s viewpoint that is
interesting. She provides a unique
voice. At one point she talks about a 507-year-old
mollusk that was discovered; she says, “A Tudor mollusk! Some things are just catch-your-breath
amazing.” Unfortunately, Ruby seems very
precocious for her age at some times but then she uses such childish slang like
“super-coolio” over and over again.

What I
enjoyed about the book is Yasmin’s character change. She comes to learn about herself. For instance, she comes to realize that she
changed after the birth of her daughter, so much so that “she’d lost the idea
of herself” and “had been missing herself as she used to be.” She realizes she is the reason for the
distance that has developed with Matt. She
also learns more about her daughter. She is constantly asking Ruby to speak
using her “mouth-voice” which Ruby does not like doing. Only later does Yasmin understand Ruby’s fear
that when she talks, she disappears:
“’When I sign or type I see the same words as the person I’m talking to.
. . . But if I speak with my mouth, then only the hearing person hears my
words. I don’t.’”

There is
considerable suspense during the trip along the ice road. In the last quarter of the novel, however,
the tension disappears. The tone becomes
didactic so the book ceases to be a mystery and becomes an environmental
treatise.

The novel
succeeds in conveying the oppressive cold and darkness, but there are too many
instances of unrealistic plotting. A
drop-dead gorgeous astrophysicist becomes an ice road trucker? We can understand her motivation - that she
“couldn’t bear for Ruby to suffer the appalling bereavement of losing a parent,
the terrible violence of that grief” - but would she really behave so
irresponsibly as to put her daughter’s life at risk? I can’t get past the lack of realism, though
other readers more able to suspend disbelief will undoubtedly enjoy the
suspense.

Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Today I’m featuring another review from my archives. This book I read in March of 2015. Though I gave it a low rating, it appears on
the longlist for the 2016 Dublin Literary Award.

Natchez Burning by
Greg Iles

2 Stars

Penn Cage is the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. Tom, his
father, is the town’s doctor who is charged with the murder of Viola Turner, an
African-American woman who had been his nurse before leaving the community 40
years earlier. There is suspicion that their relationship in the 1960s had not
been solely professional. When Tom refuses to defend himself, his son sets out
to discover the truth; his search leads him to investigate unsolved crimes of
the civil rights era carried out by the Double Eagles, an ultra-violent KKK
splinter group. Penn is aided by Henry Sexton, an intrepid reporter who has
devoted his life to revealing the crimes of the Double Eagles, and by Caitlin
Masters, Penn’s fiancée and a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist.

What is uncovered is Natchez’s “secret history” of violence
against blacks. It is not an easy read; there are descriptions of savage
beatings and torture and “deaths by flaying, burning, drowning, and
crucifixion.” The horrors pile up. Caitlin mentions at one point, “But the sheer
weight of the horrors Henry had uncovered had begun to deaden her
sensibilities. The same thing could easily happen to the Examiner’s readers, so she had to choose her focus carefully.” Iles
has the same problem; instead of just being horrified at the extent of the
injustice and violence, the reader may be left wondering how the author is
going to outdo himself in the next confrontation between good and evil.

Some of the scenes seem to have been written with a film in
mind. The climactic scene is definitely one of these. In terms of dialogue and
suspense, it is tailor-made for a thriller. Unfortunately, it strains
credibility, as do many cinematic thrillers.

Characterization is problematic. There are many
stereotypical characters: a shady district attorney with a grudge, a crooked
sheriff, a criminal mastermind, an intrepid reporter, etc. So many of the
characters tend to be either totally good or totally evil. For example, Tom is
the noble doctor who “practiced family medicine for more than forty years,
treating some of the most underprivileged in our community with little thought
of financial reward. . . . If small towns still have saints, then he is surely
one of them.” Twice he is referred to as “Atticus Finch with a stethoscope.” In
the prologue, the reader is told that Penn discovers that his father may have a
chink in his armour and “tired feet of clay – or worse.” Nonetheless, there is
little to tarnish his image; questionable behaviour seems to be motivated by
love for family. On the other hand, the redneck villains have no redeeming
qualities or extenuating motivations.

Point of view alternates among characters, Penn’s chapters
being the only ones narrated in first person. Penn is supposedly the star of
the book, but I found him annoying. He makes many stupid decisions and drags
others in with him. He repeatedly mentions how dangerous the situation is, but
then does not take the precautions one would expect. I have not read the
previous three Penn Cage novels, but I cannot understand why everyone defers to
him. He withholds information from authorities who have proven to be
trustworthy.

The themes are clearly outlined in the prologue. The book
examines the effects of the past: “’The
past is never dead; it’s not even past. If it were, there would be no grief or
sorrow.’” It argues that there are no saints: “’Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the
stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.’”
And, of course, it examines the conflict between loyalty to family versus
loyalty to truth/justice; Penn is forced to question the adage, “’If a man is
forced to choose between the truth and his father, only a fool chooses the
truth.’” Stating the themes so explicitly is almost an insult to the reader’s
intelligence.

There are a lot of loose ends, so the ending will not be
satisfactory for many people. What exactly happened when Viola died? What were
Tom and Walt hoping to accomplish when they set out? The fate of several
characters is not mentioned. This book is apparently the first of a trilogy, so
presumably these questions will be answered in the future books.

This book has had rave reviews, so I was rather
disappointed. It has a great deal of suspense so works as a thriller, but it is
too lengthy. There is considerable repetition. Whether or when I read the other
books in the series depends on what other books are on my to-read pile since I
did not find myself so invested in the characters that I can’t wait to see what
happens to them.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Though
romance novels have millions of readers, I am not one of them. In fact, I tend to avoid such books that
might be classified as love stories. However,
I have to admit that over the years I have read some books, mostly classics,
which would be considered romance novels.

Here are 20
titles with strong romance elements which I will admit to reading:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sabine’s Notebook by Nick Bantock

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

If you are
interested in the books considered the best romance novels, check out these
sites:

This
article had me browsing through a book found on Schatje’s Shelves: At Home
with Books: How Booklovers Live with and
Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, and
Christopher Simon Sykes. Keith Richards
of Rolling Stones fame is one of the bibliophiles featured. “In his house in rural Connecticut, he
oversaw every aspect of his library: its size, shelving, the kind of wood, the furnishings.” He mentions that for him there is nothing
more satisfying than to be lying on his sofa, buried in a book, in his own
library: “reading anchors me.” His books show eclectic tastes: 19th- and 20th- century novelists,
espionage, art, musical instruments, and military history. “I can read anything except a book with pages
missing.”

Friday, February 12, 2016

This book
brings back Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty, the police duo who handle minority
sensitive cases. This time they are
asked to investigate the murder of Mohsin Dar, Esa’s estranged friend who had
infiltrated a Muslim terrorist cell planning an attack on Toronto. One of their problems is that greater value
is “ascribed to the façade of Khattak’s investigation than to the actual truth
it might uncover.” Another problem is
that the man in charge of unravelling the terrorist plot bears a grudge against
Khattak and so withholds information.
Complications also arise when Rachel goes undercover as a potential
Islam convert at a local mosque and when Khattak’s sister Ruksh becomes engaged
to Hassan Ashkouri, the leader of the terrorist cell. Can the murderer be identified and arrested
and the terrorist attack prevented?

As in the
first novel in this series, it is the characterization of Khattak and Rachel
that stands out. They behave
consistently with the traits outlined in The
Unquiet Dead. Their relationship
develops further; the partnership is “expanding, deepening.” In this second book, Khattak’s divided
loyalties are emphasized: he is torn
between his Muslim faith and his role as a detective investigating members of
his community. His actions are constantly
being scrutinized and suspected by both his faith community and the police
force.

The motives
of the various members of the mosque are thoughtfully dissected. Readers will find themselves not agreeing
with the actions of some of these people, but they will have a good
understanding of their sometimes complex motivations. The author insists that the reader not equate
Islam with terrorism by contrasting Khattak’s moderate views with those of
Ashkouri: “It wasn’t enough to say that
the same faith that had produced Hassan Ashkouri had also produced Esa Khattak,
good and evil sketched out in broad strokes.
It wasn’t easy and two-dimensional like that. It was nuanced, complex, difficult . . .
Ashkouri had chosen a different path, a different means of addressing his anger
and grievances, his choices vindicated by his reading of history. Something could be beautiful, humane,
encompassing. Or it could be made ugly. And maybe that was the lesson. We bring to a tradition what is already
within ourselves, however our moral compass is designed, whatever our ethical
training is.”

The author
also addresses the issue of moderate Muslims having to speak up. She has Khattak regretting that he didn’t
always do so: “Times he should have
spoken up, questions he should have asked, challenging others to an ethical
reading of scripture in lieu of the tropes of dogma. It had seemed like a burden that someone else
should carry, yet he realized it belonged to him, just as it belonged to each
of his coreligionists, this personal quest for an ethical life – and it
couldn’t be put down by choice, not without abandoning the field to the
hardened and hidebound, whose rigid conservatism and eschewal of modernity
contained with it the seeds of jihadist ideology.”

My reservations
about the book revolve around the plot.
There are some unrealistic elements.
For example, Rachel admits that she is not really prepared for her
undercover role: Choosing an undercover
surname “was as far as she had gone in establishing her cover. Rachel possessed little previous undercover
experience.” Why then would Khattak be “authorized
to send [Rachel]” to the mosque in such a role?
Wouldn’t the agency charged with gathering intelligence and ensuring
national security be wary of sending in an amateur who could unwittingly make a
terrorist cell aware of its being under surveillance? And perhaps I’m naïve but would a man in
charge of bringing down a terrorist cell purposely withhold information because
of his personal animosity towards Khattak, a tactic that could risk national
security and the safety of innocent people?
The secrets within policing are almost as dangerous as the secrets of
the terrorist cell.

I
appreciated the insight offered into Arabic poetry. For example, readers are told about the
“well-established tradition of Arabic poetry, conflating the personal with the
political.” Agha Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri
poet, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, a Pakistani poet, are mentioned more than once so I
was inspired to do some research. Faiz,
I discovered, was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for literature.

Apparently
a third book in the series is already being written. In an interview with Maclean’s magazine, the author said the following: “In my third book I send him to Iran, where
Khattak, who’s from the same majority Sunni tradition as me, will be in the
minority in a Shia country. I wanted him
to examine the privilege of membership in a majority tradition, where you never
have to think about the feelings or the traditions of the other and see what
that feels like. I like to put him in
situations where he’s uncomfortable, and has to examine his perspective and
assumptions much more critically” (http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-interview-crime-author-ausma-zehanat-khans-unique-lens-on-islam/).

The first
two books of this series have sufficient strengths that I look forward to the
third one.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Yesterday, I posted my review of The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan, the first mystery in a
series featuring a Canadian Muslim detective.
It reminded me that three years ago I read another first mystery in a
series featuring a Muslim detective, this one set in Saudia Arabia. Here’s my review of that book:

4 Stars

This is a mystery set in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Nayir
ash-Sharqi, a desert guide, is asked by his friend, Othman Shrawi, to find his
sixteen-year-old sister, Nouf. After her body is discovered, Nayir sets out to
find out how she died; he is assisted in his investigation by Katya Hijazi, a
forensic technician who also happens to be Othman’s fiancée.

The mystery is satisfactory, although the identity of one
person guilty of a crime is very obvious early on because the implication of
this person solves a relationship problem for Nayir and Katya. What is most
interesting about the book is its glimpse into Saudi Arabia’s restrictive
Muslim culture. Various aspects of Saudi culture are interwoven into the
narrative: the importance of hospitality, attitudes towards Americans and
immigrants, segregation of men and women, gender roles.

For Nayir and Katya to work together, they must resort to
deception and subterfuge which make Nayir uncomfortable. As a traditional
conservative Muslim, he has rather rigid ideas about female modesty and proper
behaviour. His interaction with Katya forces him to become more flexible as she
provides commentary on the realities of life for women. Nayir argues that “’All
the prescriptions for modesty and wearing the veil, for decent behavior and
abstinence before marriage’” are intended to protect women, but Katya counters
that “’those same prescriptions can sometimes cause the degradation people fear
the most’” (219).

In many ways, the main conflict is between tradition and desire.
Nayir wants to marry, yet his religious beliefs restrict his contact with
single women. Katya would like to be a wife and mother, but she also wants a
career, so she seeks “’a husband who respects [her] work’” (217). It also
becomes clear that Nouf also wanted the freedom to make choices: “’Yes, options
. . . I think that’s what Nouf wanted’” (218).

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy mysteries
in an exotic locale which is gradually made familiar.

Two more books have been added to this series: City of
Veils and Kingdom of Strangers.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Esa Khattak
is a Canadian Muslin in charge of CPS, a branch of policing which handles
minority-sensitive cases. He and his
partner, Rachel Getty, are asked to investigate the death of Christopher
Drayton. Two mysteries end up being the
focus of their investigation: was
Drayton really Dražen Krstić, a war criminal implicated in the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre, and was his fall an accident?

The
characterization of the detective team is great. The two are foils: Khattak is “urbane, soft-spoken, respectful,
decisive” and epitomizes “the female holy grail of tall, dark, and handsome,”
dressing in “sleek splendor” whereas Rachel is “direct and to the point” and
“boxy, square-shouldered, round-cheeked, indifferently dressed.” The two have a good relationship and work
well together. As is often the case with
male/female detective pairs, there seems to be an unspoken attraction.

Both
Khattak and Rachel have personal problems.
Rachel’s dysfunctional family (abusive father, distant mother, estranged
brother) gets considerable attention.
Less is known about Khattak’s backstory except that his wife died and he
seeks “forgiveness for the accident that had caused her death.”

The characterization
that is poor is that of the other women in the novel. All seem to be manipulative, even Rachel’s
mother. Then there are the shallow
stereotypes: Drayton’s fiancée is a
hyper-sexualized gold digger; Khattak’s former girlfriend is likewise promiscuous;
even the curator of the museum in which Drayton was interested is
predatory. All of the women are also
beautiful, thereby inciting Rachel’s envy.

One aspect
I found annoying is Khattak’s keeping information from his partner. This approach is obviously intended to create
suspense: what is really going on? The reader, like Rachel, is left in the
dark. Khattak’s behaviour is explained
by comments such as “[Rachel] knew he’d tell her everything she needed to know
eventually” and “He was often reticent at the beginning of an investigation”
and his justification that “’I’d like to see what conclusions you draw without
the weight of prior knowledge.’”
Nonetheless his evasiveness is too obviously a dramatic ploy and
unrealistic.

Throughout
the book are interspersed are statements about the Bosnian War, including
eyewitness testimonies before the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia. All of these
quotations are explained at the end in extensive notes, but the lack of initial
explanation is confusing. The reader
wonders whether these are flashbacks to the past of some of the characters or
whether the statements of people outside the narrative. They certainly emphasize the horror of what
happened but more clarity at the beginning would have been helpful.

This is the
first of the author’s mysteries and, as indicated, it is not without its
flaws. However, it is a strong police
procedural and its information about the Bosnian War has already had me doing
further research. And I've decided
to read the next book in the series. I’m
interested to learn more about Khattak and Rachel and to see how their
relationship develops. Look for my
review of the second book, The Language
of Secrets, later in the week.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Because
2016 is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I’ve decided that
throughout the year, I will occasionally focus on some Shakespeare books to be
found on Schatje’s Shelves.

Today I’m
featuring The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David
Bevington. I have the 6th
edition, published in 2008, though I gather that there is now a 7th
edition available – published in 2012.
This is not a cheap text; the most recent edition costs over
$150(CAN). It is well worth the price; I
think it’s the best single-volume Shakespeare.

Bevington
is an American literary scholar who has been called "One of the most
learned and devoted of Shakespeareans," by Harold Bloom. Apparently, he is
the only living scholar to have personally edited Shakespeare's complete
corpus.

The
introduction of The Complete Works of
Shakespeare is 106 pages long with sections on Life in Shakespeare’s
England, Drama before Shakespeare, London Theaters and Dramatic Companies,
Shakespeare’s Life, Shakespeare’s Language and Development as Poet and
Dramatist, Editions and Editors of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Criticism.

The text is
organized by genre: comedies, histories,
tragedies, romances, and poems.

Each play
is introduced by a descriptive essay which outlines the themes to be found. Extensive footnotes appear throughout; they
are complete, concise and accurate. The annotations
are, as a rule, helpful without being intrusive.

One useful
feature of the layout is that, instead of being given the usual style of line
numbering (10, 20, 30, etc.), numbers occur only at the end of lines which have
footnotes. This approach eliminates the
tedious and time-wasting hassle of line counting, and the frustration of
searching through footnotes only to find that no note exists. If a line has a note, the reader will know at
once, and the notes are easy for the eye to locate as the keywords preceding
notes are in bold type.

At the end
of the book, there are four appendices.
One discusses the dates and early texts of each of the plays; the second
explains the sources of each of the plays; the third focuses on performances of
the plays throughout the ages; and the last lists, play by play, the various
film versions of the plays.

So in this
year of celebrating The Bard, if you are interested in purchasing a really good
single-volume edition of Shakespeare’s works, I’d recommend this one.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

February is
Black History Month, which is the
annual observance for remembrance of important people and events in the history
of the African diaspora. I already
touched on this topic on January 18 (Martin Luther King Day) when I listed 50 titles that address
racism. Any of these books would be
appropriate reads, I think.

Some quick
research has led me to a number of sites which suggest other books as possible
reads for this month. Here are the two
sites which I liked. Unlike the list I
compiled earlier, these focus on more recent releases:

I also came
across this interesting site: http://lithub.com/25-new-books-by-african-writers-you-should-read/. It focuses on books written by African
writers, all being published for the first time in the U.S. during 2016. These do not fit the theme of Black History,
but I think we need to read more international authors, and African writers
probably receive least attention from North American readers.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Lovers of
reading tend to like biblionovels, novels which have a bibliophilic theme or
main character. Many are set in
bookstores or libraries. Some readers
would argue that the only thing better than reading books is reading books
about books! I perused Schatje’s Shelves
and found 15 authors who have written biblionovels.

Alan
Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile
library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant
life of an avid reader.

Katarina
Bivald’s The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend features a Swedish former
bookstore employee opening a bookstore in Iowa

Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit
451 is probably the biblionovel that springs to most peoples' minds, a
futuristic fantasy-noir in which books are verboten, but so beloved that people
memorize their favorites and recite them underground.

Geraldine
Brooks’ The People of the Book is a traipse through European, African
and Middle Eastern history as one follows the detective work of a book
conservator and her research on the illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah.

A.S.
Byatt’s Possession is a great literary puzzle wrapped inside a
passionate romance between bibliophiles that shifts between present day and
Victorian London.

John
Dunning’s Booked to Die, the first of the Cliff Janeway series, has the Denver
police detective turned book scout finding an underpriced literary treasure at
every single thrift shop and garage sale. Unfortunately, the later books in the
series focus less on his book finds and more on shoot 'em up chase scenes with
villains.

Nina
George’s The Little Paris Bookshop has a literary apothecary working
from a floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, telling readers the exact
book which will ease the hardships in their life.

Helene
Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road and its sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street,
are about a long distance friendship between a New Yorker and the head buyer of
a secondhand bookstore in London.

Bill
Richardson’s Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast and its sequel Bachelor
Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book are cozy reads about two eccentric
twin brothers, Virgil and Hector, who run a bed and breakfast for bibliophiles.

Diane
Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale has a reclusive, best-selling English
author relating her autobiography to a young antiquarian bookshop
assistant. The book is a Gothic-tinged
story with snippets of Charlotte Bronte's Jane
Eyre woven throughout.

Mary Ann
Schaffer and Annie Barrows wrote The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel
Society, an epistolary novel about the power of books, loyalty and
friendship during the German occupation of this Channel Island during World War
II.

Dai Sijie’s
Balzac
and the Little Chinese Seamstress has the transformative power of
reading at the centre of this semi-autobiographical novel of two young Chinese
men sent for "re-education" in a remote Chinese mountain village in
the late 1960s.

Carlos Ruiz
Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind has an antiquarian book dealer's son finding
solace in reading a book by Julian Carax.
But when he seeks out other Carax titles, he finds that someone has been
systematically destroying all copies of the author's work.

Gabrielle
Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has a widowed owner of a
bookstore on a Martha's Vineyard-like island whose life is changed forever by a
publisher's rep and a baby on the doorstep.

Markus
Zusak’s The Book Thief is about Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living
outside of Munich in 1939. She steals books. With the help of her foster
father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbours
during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

This is the
first of the Edie Kiglatuk mysteries set in Canada’s high Arctic. Everything begins when an American hunter is
killed while on a hunting expedition guided by Edie, a half-white, half-Inuit
woman. Her community of Autisaq on
Ellesmere Island wants to dismiss the death as an accident, but Edie is left
uneasy, and when more deaths occur, she decides to investigate.

I liked the
character of Edie. She is a
strong-willed, intelligent woman, though she certainly has her flaws. She struggles with alcoholism, by her
mid-twenties, having “already drunk away her hunting career and . . . [being]
well on the way to drinking away her life”.
The other character who is well-developed is Derek Palliser, a police
officer upon whom Edie occasionally relies for help. Derek is unmotivated except by his interest
in lemmings and so has to be pushed to do anything. Unfortunately, many of the other characters
are mere caricatures of corrupt officials, unscrupulous whites, and greedy
businessmen. The “bad guys” are extreme
in their behaviour.

The book
begins slowly, though the pace increases once Edie starts her investigation. Then the mysteries pile up becoming very
convoluted with several villains; it is sometimes difficult to remember who did
what to whom. At times the plot becomes
rather farfetched. What also becomes
frustrating is Edie’s frequent stumbling upon clues that inevitably take her
closer to solving the several mysteries.

What
impressed me most about the book is its rich detail about Inuit life and
culture. I was amazed to learn that the
author is British. She certainly has an
understanding and appreciation for the Inuit.
She details the realities of life north of the Arctic Circle: a harsh environment, poverty, alcoholism,
fossil fuel exploration, and the effects of climate change. The latter is emphasized with several
references to the impact of global warming on the lives of both the people and
the wildlife. What will be remembered by
many readers is the food: Edie eats
seal-blood soup, caribou tongue, fried blubber, and fermented walrus gut. What I remember is a comment about gratitude:
“Gratitude is a qalunaat [white]
custom . . . Inuit were entitled to help from each other. Gratitude didn’t come into it.”

I learned
not only about how to conduct an Inuit search but about another dark chapter in
Canada’s history: Canada’s forced
relocation, in 1953, of Inuit from their traditional home on the eastern coast
of Hudson Bay to Ellesmere Island, the most northerly landmass on the planet. The author of this novel wrote a non-fiction
book about this relocation. I will
certainly be checking out this book entitled The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit
Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic.

Two other
books in this series have been published:
The Boy in the Snow and The Bone Seeker. Though the first book has flaws, I found it
of sufficient quality that I will read at least the second in the series.

The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000)
is awarded to an author “whose debut work—published in 2015—represents
distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.”

The shortlist has five titles:

In the Country:
Stories by Mia Alvar

These nine stories give voice to the women and men of the
Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their
families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United
States, and elsewhere.

The Turner House
by Angela Flournoy

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty
years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone; it has seen the
arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a
father. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her
home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is
worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to
decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and
shapes—their family’s future.

Mr. and Mrs. Doctor
by Julie Iromuanya

Ifi and Job, a Nigerian couple in an arranged marriage,
begin their lives together in Nebraska with a single, outrageous lie: that Job
is a doctor, not a college dropout. Unwittingly, Ifi becomes his co-conspirator
until his first wife, Cheryl, whom he married for a green card years ago, re-enters
the picture and upsets Job's tenuous balancing act.

The Sympathizer by
Viet Thanh Nguyen

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a
general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of
his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage
aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots
start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the
captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the
Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the
story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor
Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to
Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.

Mayumi and the Sea of
Happiness by Jennifer Tseng

Forty-one years old, disenchanted wife and dutiful mother,
Mayumi’s work as a librarian on a small island off the coast of New England
feeds her passion for reading and provides her with many occasions for wry
observations on human nature, but it does little to remedy the mundanity of her
days. That is, until the day she issues a library card to a shy
seventeen-year-old boy and swiftly succumbs to a sexual obsession that subverts
the way she sees the library, her family, the island she lives on, and
ultimately herself.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

I agree
with the title of this novel: there are
missing pieces. Unfortunately, what is
missing are the elements of a good mystery:
a believable plot, convincing characters, and suspense.

Sarah and
Jack Quinlan have been married for twenty years. They return to Penny Gate, Iowa, when Jack’s
Aunt Julia (who raised him after the death of his mother Lydia) is injured in a
fall. It turns out that Aunt Julia’s
fall is similar to that which resulted in the death of Jack’s mother, a death
which was ruled a homicide. Sarah learns about the details of this death only
now and discovers that her husband has also withheld many other facts about his
past. She starts investigating her
mother-in-law’s murder and unravels more family secrets, ones which begin
eroding her trust in Jack.

Character
development is weak. Sarah and Jack have
been married for two decades, but their relationship is very shallow. Their conversations sound like ones
acquaintances would have. And Sarah’s
feelings for her husband change so quickly that it seems that their marriage
never had a solid foundation. Sarah is
jealous of a girlfriend Jack had when he was a teenager? Many of her statements and actions are just
illogical and indicate a lack of intelligence.
For instance, she asks someone for help and then when that person tries
to be discreet in public about aiding her, Sarah is “still baffled by her odd
behavior”? She orders a Bloody Mary
though “vodka always gave her a headache”?
Sarah has to be told that Jack couldn’t have pushed his aunt down the
stairs: “’You and Jack weren’t even in
town when Julia was hurt. There was no
way he could have done it.’”? And to
this statement, she sits “back in her chair, dumbfounded [and says] ‘Oh, my God, you’re right’”?! This is not the type of comment expected from
someone who was once a “hard-news reporter, the kind that traveled all over the
work . . . covering major international news stories”! Sarah
claims to have “journalistic instinct” but it never seems to work. She receives strange emails and just
dismisses them?

Sarah is
not the only person whose behaviour is unrealistic. An employee of the police department agrees
to help her though they have met only once?
And that person is willing to risk losing her job? And that abettor takes a box containing an
entire case file, “’the one file that the sheriff keeps in his office’” and
tells Sarah she can have it for a day or two?
And why would that employee include a Walkman so Sarah can listen to the
enclosed tapes, when there are transcripts of the tapes?

There are
comments made that make no sense. Sarah
believes that the murder investigation into Lydia’s murder is closed (though no
one has been charged or convicted). The
sheriff tells her, “’the case isn’t officially closed, just suspended’” but later
Sarah twice mentions that “the case is closed.” Then the sheriff says, “Officially, the Lydia
Tierney murder investigation is closed” only to say, a few pages later, “Now I
have two active murder cases to investigate.’”
The reader’s head should be left spinning.

The
plotting is amateurish. There is no real
suspense since any astute reader will identify the murderer virtually from the
beginning: there is really only one
person who could be guilty. The attempts
to create suspense are so obvious and unconvincing. Sarah leaves her car keys and cell phone in
her car which is parked in the middle of nowhere and then she panics when two
men in a truck stop to ask if she has car problems?

Clumsiness
is used to advance plot. Sarah stumbles
on steps and thereby discovers blood spots.
Her purse catches the edge of a desk and, conveniently, a file which
contains vital information flutters to the floor. Later her elbow shatters some glass
jars. What a klutz! And even Sarah’s sister-in-law is as clumsy,
knocking over a vase of flowers set on a windowsill in Julia’s hospital room;
she manages to knock it over though she is described as being close to Julia’s
bed, not the windowsill.

Then there
is the focus on unnecessary details. For
instance, why is there so much emphasis on how decrepit the hospital in Penny
Gate is? “The hospital was clean but
dated. Institutional-green walls were
lined with faded Impressionist prints and the carpet was worn and thin.” And
“Sarah’s eyes followed [the nurses] down the depressingly dim corridor. She noticed on the ceiling that a brown spot
had bloomed against the white plaster and rainwater dripped rhythmically into a
large bucket below. She imagined mold
and mildew festering behind the walls.” And “The old elevator creaked and
groaned and was excruciatingly slow in its descent . . . The elevator finally arrived at their floor
and the doors opened to an empty, quiet hallway. It was cold and eerie . . . ” And “The
stairwell was windowless and weakly lit by dusty fluorescent bulbs. Cobwebs swung precariously in the corner
where drab cement blocks met the ceiling . . . ”

The
identity of the murderer is not a surprise but the motive for Lydia’s killing
is not believable. Actually, many of the
killer’s actions are illogical. Why
would a murderer email “creepy” messages which could help identify
him/her? Would a killer really leave
evidence at a crime scene as “’just my little inside joke’”?

And there
are other things that make no sense.
How can a person claim to have seen Sarah “’snooping around Jack’s old
room, looking in drawers’” when that person was not in the house, much less in
the room? Then why does Sarah look for a
“shoe box with Jack’s name written on it” in her brother-in-law’s house when
she saw it in Uncle Hal’s house? How can
she claim the box was “removed” when it hadn’t been in her brother-in-law’s
house in the first place?! A woman who
dismisses an old love as “a weak little boy” will then argue that they “belong
together”?! An advice columnist would
receive “overtly violent” letters? People keep old farm tools in a
bathroom? A reporter would be repeatedly
told “Don’t ask the questions if you
don’t want the answers”? I could go
on and on.

Obviously,
some major editing is required. I had
not heard of this writer and so was surprised to learn that she is a
“bestselling author.” Perhaps the many
issues with this book are due to the fact that I read an advanced reading
copy?

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― Jane Austen

About Me

I'm a retired English teacher/teacher-librarian who, after 30 years, left the classroom and became a copyeditor and book reviewer. Reading has always been my passion and now, in our new home, I have, thanks to my husband, the library of my dreams. For many years, before I retired and moved, I belonged to THE Timmins Book Club which is one of the oldest in North America, with minutes dating back to 1938; I submitted an article about us and it was featured on the LitLovers.com website: http://www.litlovers.com/featured-clubs/timmins-book-club. Now I'm trying to start a global book club of sorts with my blog: http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/.